


Seasons

by chlexcer



Category: EXO (Band), SHINee
Genre: Age Difference, College!AU, Domestic, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Professor!Kyungsoo, Romance, Slice of Life, literally this is just a pile of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-02
Updated: 2016-09-02
Packaged: 2018-08-12 14:53:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7938772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chlexcer/pseuds/chlexcer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jongin met Kyungsoo on the last weekend of March, when the winter frost and cups of hot chocolate started turning into cherry blossoms and fresh lemonade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seasons

**Author's Note:**

> See, I can also write things that aren't SHINee and lesbian.  
> It's a little known fact that I love KaiSoo (probably because I spend most time ranting about TaeKai), but I do love them. Their relationship is so pure and soft and beautiful to me, and you can probably see how I see KaiSoo just by reading this.  
> I was recently in Seoul, and I fell in love with it, but the sudden switch from winter to summer (I travelled from a country in the Southern hemisphere lol) got me thinking about seasons, and yeah, this is pretty much the result.  
> I hope you enjoy it!!

Jongin met Kyungsoo on the last weekend of March, when the winter frost and cups of hot chocolate started turning into cherry blossoms and fresh lemonade.

He had just turned twenty, his third year of college had only just begun, and he and his two best friends were planning to celebrate their last free weekend (and Sehun’s birthday) before they had to start really studying, by going out to have some drinks together.

They went to a pretty nice bar with soft illumination and jazz music close to the campus because Taemin’s boyfriend, Minho, worked there serving tables during the weekends and he could always get them free drinks or at least small discounts. It was their usual place to go to, even if Sehun always complained that it was boring and that they had been there so many times that finding new people to hook-up with was an extremely difficult task.

“I just feel like we see the same people over and over again when we come here, and it’s boring,” Sehun said as he played with the metallic cap of his beer bottle. 

“That’s not true,” Jongin had said, his eyes set on a man that was sitting a couple of tables away with a few more people. He seemed short (shorter than him, at least), but his shoulders were quite broad, and Jongin hadn’t been able to stop looking at him since the moment his eyes first landed on him. Jongin’s eyesight wasn’t very good, and he had forgotten to put on his contacts, but he could still make out the features of the other man’s face – he had thick eyebrows and thick lips that turned into a heart when he smiled or laughed, and his eyes were big and as black as his hair. There were three other guys with him, and the man looked like he was having a lot of fun with them. Jongin thought he could look at him all night. “I had never seen him before.”

“Who?” Sehun asked curiously, and Jongin made a gesture at the table with the four men using his bottle. Sehun looked the way Jongin indicated and nodded appreciatively. “The tall one with the ears? He’s cute.”

“No, not him. The one in front of him,” Jongin said, rolling his eyes.

“Hm… He’s alright, I guess… You can keep him” Sehun said, taking a swig from his beer. “Dibs on the tall one.”

“He has a familiar face. The short one you like, I mean,” Taemin chirped in, leaning closer against Jongin to get a better look of the man he was staring at. “He’s pretty cute. You should go talk to him.”

Jongin gave Taemin a small panicked look as he shook his head. “I can’t do that.”

Taemin started to insist, and the racket seemed to call the attention of the four guys sitting on the other table. The short man’s wide eyes met Jongin’s, and that was all it took to make Jongin believe that love at first sight could actually be real.

The initiative came from the tall man, though.

Apparently he, too, had been checking Sehun out because he invited them over to sit with them. 

Jongin felt a little weird when he squished onto the seat next to the short man he had been looking at for so long. His cheeks felt hot, and he tried to make himself belief that it was just the beer.

The tall man’s name was Chanyeol, and Sehun made himself comfortable beside him. Jongdae and Junmyeon were the other two friends, who were actually engaged. But the name of the person that had caught Jongin’s eyes was Kyungsoo.

Kyungsoo was twenty-six years old and a teacher, as were his friends (expect for Jongdae, who was a graphic designer), so Jongin could understand why Sehun lied about their ages when Chanyeol asked him about that.

Taemin laughed shamelessly when Sehun, the youngest of their group by a few months, said he was twenty-three years old and a nurse (when he was actually still nineteen and still studying to become a nurse eventually), but he played along and also lied about his and Jongin’s age.

“And what do you do, Jongin?” Junmyeon had asked him, and it wasn’t his question that made him nervous, but the way Kyungsoo’s big eyes were boring onto him.

“I, uh, I work at a bank…” He said, and he knew that it was vague and not interesting at all, but he couldn’t bring himself to come up with anything more elaborate out of fear of stuttering and blowing their friends’ covers.

After self-introductions were over, Jongin felt more relaxed. Kyungsoo’s friends were funny and welcoming, even if Chanyeol and Sehun wouldn’t stop flirting with each other in a pretty shameless manner. But then again, something strangely similar happened between Kyungsoo and him.

“You’re not twenty-four years old, are you?” Kyungsoo had asked him, quietly, while their friends kept talking to each other loudly across the table. Jongin looked at him with his eyes wide, and when he saw a smile on the other man’s heart-shaped lips he couldn’t help but shake his head, a little sheepishly. Kyungsoo chuckled. “Figured. You still have a baby face.”

“Yeah, well… Sehun wanted to impress your friend. But he is going to become a nurse someday, you know? Just in a few years,” Jongin said, unable to keep a smile away from his face even if his palms were a little sweaty. He was nervous, but there was something about Kyungsoo that made him want to talk to him more and to be honest with him. “I’ll take the baby face thing as a compliment, by the way.”

Kyungsoo nodded, “you should. You’re handsome. How old are you, really?”

“Thanks,” Jongin said, and his throat felt a little dry. “You’re handsome, too. And I’m twenty years old.”

“Do you really want to work in a bank when you’re older?” Kyungsoo asked, and Jongin was amazed by how easily he saw right through him. When Jongin shook his head, the older man laughed. “I knew it. What do you really want to do, then?”

“I want to dance. I study dance at college,” he answered, honestly, and for some reason he felt proud of himself when Kyungsoo made an impressed expression. “I also like literature, though.”

“Oh, what authors do you like?” Kyungsoo asked, and that’s how it was for the rest of the night.

They talked, and talked, and talked, and Jongin doesn’t think he had ever felt more comfortable with one person after knowing them for just a couple of hours. It was just them in their small world regardless of the fact that they were surrounded by people, and when Kyungsoo said he would like to see him again he felt like flying.

Sehun went home with Chanyeol that night, and Taemin went to Minho’s after his boyfriend’s shift at the bar was over, but Jongin felt like the luckiest out of all of them even though he returned to his dorm by himself because he had Kyungsoo’s phone number saved and the promise to meet up the following week, just the two of them.

 

The cherry trees were on full bloom when they kissed for the first time, three weeks, four dates, and thousands of texts later.

 

Jongin was from a small town located five hours and twenty-three minutes south from Seoul (including rest and eating stops), and the following summer he brought his boyfriend with him to meet his family.

Jongin had two older sisters who lived in Seoul and had already met Kyungsoo, but his mother was dying to know him after they had been together for so long, and Kyungsoo had already introduced him to his family, so it was only natural that Kyungsoo went with him on his trip to his hometown.

They went in Kyungsoo’s car, and even if the trip was a little long it didn’t feel that way. They played dumb games, like forming words with the letters on license plates, and changing the lyrics to the songs they listened to. They kept the windows rolled down, which caused Jongin’s a-little-too-long brown hair to whip in the wind and the summer sun to tingle on the skin of his arm. They bought a pair of watermelons on the side of the road, they ate ice cream sitting on the edge of the sidewalk at a gas station, and Jongin’s melted too fast on his fingers.

It was vanilla with almonds and a thick layer of chocolate, but Jongin only tasted the wild cherry in Kyungsoo’s mouth when the elder kissed him shamelessly under the endless sky and over the hot concrete. It was sticky, and delicious, and so, so sweet.

Unsurprisingly, Jongin’s parents adored Kyungsoo.

They had been pretty surprised when their son had told them that his boyfriend was actually a literature teacher in the same university where he studied, and Jongin knew they hadn’t been very reassured even though he told them that Kyungsoo was only five years older than him. 

(“He’s a teacher!” His parents had said, obviously scandalized when Jongin had first told them about Kyungsoo.

“But he’s not _my_ teacher! I had no idea he even works in the same university I go to!” Jongin had defended.)

They started liking him more when it became evident that Jongin was happy with him, and when more than a year had passed since Jongin and Kyungsoo first got together, they finally demanded from their son that he introduced his boyfriend to them. When they finally met him, Jongin knew they had no qualms about him.

Kyungsoo could cook, something that made Jongin’s mother love him instantly.

“Jonginnie can’t cook. I mean, he can, but the results… They aren’t very good,” she had said, making Kyungsoo laugh as he helped her making some homemade dishes to eat for lunch on the terrace of their house.

Jongin’s house had a large garden, and one night they stayed out late, lying on a blanket they had spread on the grass and just looking at the stars.

“In Seoul you can’t see stuff like this,” Kyungsoo said as he stared up at the sky, and Jongin hummed, his face pressed against the side of Kyungsoo’s neck and his arm wrapped around him. “There are way too many lights, too many buildings, and too little time to be unproductive.”

“You can see other stuff, though,” Jongin said, recalling the first time he went to Seoul on a school trip years ago. Taemin and Sehun had been just as impressed as him at the sight of the city below them when they went up Namsan Mountain with their class during the evening. Sehun had had to hold onto his hand when they went up the cable car while Taemin stood on his tiptoes against the border of the car to look down at the city lights as they grew smaller and smaller the more they approached the top of the mountain. “The stars are always up there, even if we don’t see them.”

It was like the stars had fallen from the sky and had found their new place below their feet, and Jongin didn’t hate the lights or the buildings because they had created the beautiful scene before his eyes.

“Only in Seoul I have seen them below me instead,” Jongin continued, and Kyungsoo squeezed his arm gently.

“That sounded poetic,” the elder said, a little amused, and Jongin smiled.

“I guess all the literature in you is finally starting to rub off on me,” he retorted, and Kyungsoo kissed him.

It didn’t taste like wild cherry anymore, but it did feel strangely wild – he, _Kyungsoo_ , was . There were dragonflies flying around in the garden, and the moon was a sharp smile hanging low in the sky, and Jongin moaned into Kyungsoo’s mouth when the elder pulled him closer by the waist.

Jongin’s parents weren’t naïve to stop their twenty-one-year-old son from sharing a bed with his boyfriend, but Jongin still felt like he was a teenager all over again, biting onto his knuckles to prevent himself from calling Kyungsoo’s name. Kyungsoo whispered praises into his hear, and he held him so tightly and lovingly through the night that Jongin found himself seeing a different kind of stars, and falling more and more deeply in love.

 

The night was hot, but the air conditioning kept Jongin’s old room cool enough.

 

“Why is your phone buzzing so much?” Jongin complained sleepily against the pillow of Kyungsoo’s bed. It was around six in the morning —the time Kyungsoo usually woke up to go teach his early morning classes—, but Kyungsoo had never been a noisy morning person and he had always let Jongin sleep on his bed to his heart content until he had to go to his slightly-less-early classes.

(Jongin was getting a Master’s degree in theatrical performance – a passion he discovered on the last year of his bachelor degree. But even if years had passed, he still couldn’t function properly in the mornings.)

“Junmyeon and Jongdae are throwing a Halloween party this weekend, right?” Kyungsoo reminded him, his voice soft. He was still on the bed and next to Jongin, but Jongin supposed he was probably sitting up because he couldn’t feel his body warmth beside him. “…and Jongdae and Chanyeol are mad because Junmyeon and Sehun decided to wear coordinated costumes and are being secretive about them.”

Jongin thanked his past self for muting the notifications of his phone. He knew there would be a ton of unread messages when he decided he was awake enough to check his phone.

(Chanyeol and Sehun weren’t dating, though – they had only gone home together that night. It wasn’t hard to see that they were better as friends after that, and indeed, they became pretty much best friends as years passed. Sehun had even helped Chanyeol get together with his current boyfriend, Baekhyun, the year before – the cute librarian of the library of Humanities.)

“Hng….” Jongin groaned, still sleepy, but he turned around on the bed so he could look up at Kyungsoo through barely opened eyes. “Why don’t Chanyeol and Jongdae wear coordinated costumes, then?”

“Why don’t you unblock your phone and suggest that idea to them yourself, sleepyhead?” Kyungsoo said, a little amused, and Jongin heard him chuckle when he groaned again and pressed his face against his thigh. “Good morning, though.”

“I don’t wanna,” Jongin replied, his voice muffled by the skin of Kyungsoo’s thigh. “And good morning.”

Kyungsoo didn’t wear pants to bed, it doesn’t matter how cold it was outside. Autumn was in full swing, the trees of the city had started to turn red and orange and yellow, and the rainy days were accompanied by cold wind. The city was getting chilly, coffee shops cozier, and even though Jongin hated coffee he had found himself humming when his nose caught the scent of a pumpkin latte.

Jongin had moved in with Kyungsoo a few months ago. He was tired of living in the school dorms, tired of sharing showers and toilets and washing machines with hundreds of people; tired of not being able to have Kyungsoo over because he was a teacher in the institution, after all, and he still shouldn’t be seen going into the student dorms. Sehun’s family had moved to Seoul, and they had no problem with him living with them until he finished his practice, and Taemin had been scouted by a dance company in Japan, so he was thinking about finding a small, cheap place to live by himself when Kyungsoo asked him if he would like to move in with him.

“I can pay a rent, or something,” Jongin had said. “I don’t want to inconvenience you – I don’t want you to think that I’m a freeloader, or something like that.”

“Pay a rent?” Kyungsoo had asked. “Jongin, why would I think that? Why would you pay a rent to me? I’m not asking you to move in with me because I feel sorry for you, or something. I’m asking you to move in with me because I love you and I want to live with you.”

Jongin loved Kyungsoo too, and he could understand exactly where he was coming from. He wouldn’t want Kyungsoo to pay if the situation was reversed, but he still couldn’t help but feel a little bit like an inconvenience. His heart was beating loud and fast in his chest, though – it was a huge step, but he really, really wanted to take it.

(And anyway, it’s not like he didn’t spend most of his time in Kyungsoo’s apartment before moving in).

The day of Junmyeon’s and Jongdae’s Halloween party arrived, and Jongin still had no idea what he was going to dress up as.

Kyungsoo had only changed into an all-black outfit and was going to paint his face something creepy with some theatrical makeup he had bought on the streets.

“Jongin, we have to leave in like, forty minutes, and you know how Jongdae is. Junmyeon won’t mind that you didn’t dress up, but Jongdae will give you hell _all_ night long. Change into something! Anything!” Kyungsoo had said from the bathroom as he spread white make up all over his face.

“I don’t have any clothes that look like a costume, and I had no time to look for a costume in the week!” Jongin had said as he went through the side of the closet Kyungsoo had freed for him.

“Use some make-up, then. You could go as Gene Simmons, maybe?” Kyungsoo suggested, and Jongin looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

“Who?”

Kyungsoo rolled his eyes. “The singer from Kiss?”

Jongin just grunted in acknowledgement. “Oh right. But I don’t have clothes like that…”

Then, his eyes spotted a blue button up shirt. He had liked it, but Chanyeol told him he looked like some gay space cowboy, or something like that. A light bulb went off in his head.

“Soo,” he called. “Do you have other make up colors?”

In the end, Kyungsoo was The Grudge and Jongin was David Bowie. It had taken him a few minutes to put the get-up together, and he had even gotten a few praises from Jongdae by his originality.

(The star of the night had been Chanyeol, though, who got back at Sehun for deciding to team up with Junmyeon instead of him. He didn’t wear coordinated costumes with neither Jongdae nor Baekhyun, but the tall man and his boyfriend rented professional ones that made them both look kickass. Chanyeol was The Joker and Baekhyun a really cool vampire, and in the end it was them who took home the beer twelve-pack and the box of Banana Chocopie Jongdae and Junmyeon were giving out to the winner of the best costume.)

 

For the first time since Jongin knew Taemin, his friend had dressed up for Halloween. He had found himself a Korean boyfriend in Japan —some guy named Kibum who worked at a major fashion magazine— who had apparently forced him into a Prince Howl costume. He sent him a few pictures of that, and Jongin missed his best friend a lot.

 

“What are you doing there?” Kyungsoo asked as he walked through the front door of their apartment.

Jongin was lying on the floor in the middle of the living room – the _warm_ living room floor—, as he read a book.

Outside, the temperature had dropped below zero, and even though there was no snow, the windows were covered on a layer of frost from the outside and a layer of condensation from the inside. The inside of the apartment was warm, but it was always the warmest near the floor.

When Jongin looked up from his book, he saw that the elder was still wearing a woolen hat and a pair of gloves of the same material. He looked cute – the tip of his nose was a little red due to the exposure to the cold air, and Jongin felt like kissing it. He was carrying folders under one arm –probably some material he had to correct—, but also a plastic grocery bag on his other hand.

“It’s warm down here. You should come join me, you know?” Jongin said, but that was until he noticed the folders and the bag. “Oh, do you need help with that? I’ll get it for you—what did you buy? You should take your coat, your gloves, and your hat off; I’ll take care of this.”

He didn’t wait for an answer from Kyungsoo, though. He just got up and got the bag from him so he could get rid of the extra clothes, and the older man thanked him as he kicked his shoes off and hanged his coat.

“We have a bed warmer for a reason, though— why aren’t you on the bed instead?” Jongin heard his boyfriend say as he put away the stuff Kyungsoo had bought at the convenience store.

“It doesn’t feel the same. And on the bed I’m ninety-percent sure I would fall asleep,” Jongin answered, and when Kyungsoo walked into the kitchen he wasn’t wearing his wintery clothes anymore. “Do you have a lot of stuff to correct?”

Kyungsoo nodded, and he hummed in tiredness as they kissed each other hello.

“I took a test today, so… Yeah, plenty of stuff. Looks like I won’t be sleeping much,” the elder said, and Jongin whined a little, reaching for his hands and intertwining their fingers.

“Tomorrow’s your birthday, though,” he said, pouting down at Kyungsoo. “You can’t overwork yourself the night before your birthday.”

“I can and I have to if I want to have everything corrected in time.”

And indeed, he did.

There was no getting Kyungsoo out of something when he got his mind to it, even if Jongin did manage to sneak in a lengthy make-out session with his boyfriend right before going to bed. He showed up on the living room where Kyungsoo was correcting on the coffee table, and he sat on his lap. Kyungsoo didn’t try to push him away – it was a little past midnight, so he probably knew Jongin wouldn’t just go to sleep by himself when it was already his birthday.

They kissed for what felt like hours, although it probably wasn’t more than a couple of minutes, and it was so, so hot that Jongin forgot that the winter was raging outside of their warm, cozy home.

In the morning, Jongin woke up extra early to make sure Kyungsoo was still sleeping when he woke up just so that he could make breakfast for him.

Two days later, Kyungsoo surprised him with a homemade cake with twenty-five candles on it that burned bright and warm in their room that was darkened by curtains and by the heavy layer of clouds that kept the city under a somber light.

The winter could be cold and merciless, but inside the home they had made for themselves it was a synonym of sweets, and warmth, and birthdays, and cups of hot chocolate with tiny marshmallows. 

It was those tiny things that made Jongin see that he wasn’t miles away from his family, like he used to think, and that the city wasn’t as vicious and cold as it had once been to his eyes. He had found his family, and his family was Kyungsoo. It had taken a few years to reach the point where he finally felt completely at home in a new place, but every step of the way had been worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments? Kudos?  
> Any kind of feedback is encouraged and greatly appreciated ;;; <3 <3 <3  
> Thank you for reading!!


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